Monthly Archives: January 2018

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Monday 29th January comments: (Isle of May NNR) Part One: Over the course of this week, we’ll be running a series of special blog posts which will shock many and surprise others at the events which unfolded off the Isle of May, a century ago.

100 years ago to this week, the nation was gripped by the ravages of the Great War which was raging across much of northern Europe. The British Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet had been involved in one of the deadliest and bloodiest navel battles of all time at Jutland just 20 months previous, with the loss of over 6,000 men. As a result, the Fleet Admiralty were keen to improve on ‘battle readiness’ for any further sea confrontations with the enemy which may come about as the war continued.

I was very fortunate in my psychotherapists. None of them tried to impose an interpretation on my experiences in a way that didn’t feel right for me. They suggested them from time to time, but they always allowed me the choice to find my own way forward. Two of them didn’t discuss diagnosis at all. However the cognitive therapist, who said that my use of antidepressants was ‘between me and my psychiatrist’ worked from the basis that I had recurrent major depression- what it says at the top of every letter from my psychiatrist letter to my GP- and the therapy I received was rooted in research evidence.

So it has been interesting, and worrying too, this week to watch people on social media arguing about thePower-Threat-Meaning (PTM) framework just published by the British Psychological Society. Some of its supporters have somewhat grandiosely claimed that it will ultimately replace…

2018 has started with a bang. Well, at least within the small islands of UK’s mental health activism. On Twitter, Facebook and other social media forums, discussions are going on about another ‘paradigm shifting’ publication from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society in the UK: The Power Threat Meaning Framework. Scheherazade was among the crowd that gathered at Friends House, Euston, on 12th January to listen to the speakers at the launch. We were given a 141-page ‘overview’ document. A 400+ page full document was published on Monday 15th January. Scheherazade has not yet read this document, but promise to do so in the next 1001 nights.

For now, here’s the story of the launch.

Something old, something new?

At the launch, the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) was presented as a ‘new’ way of…

Research Nurse, Alison Wilson Kay, introduces her role in the EMPOWER project and reflects on moving from a clinical role into a research role.

I’m a registered mental health nurse and my background prior to the EMPOWER study was mainly in inpatient settings, working in perinatal and child & adolescent services. The EMPOWER team is based at Glasgow University’s Mental Health Research Facility, and working in an office-based job now as opposed to a hospital environment obviously feels different; no uniform, no alarm, no jangling keys.

I now have contact with participants rather than patients: I might speak on the phone with people using the EMPOWER App, or perhaps see others in their own homes. Previously I would spend up to 12 hours a day/night working with only 6 hospital inpatients and their families/carers. Moving into research has been quite a daunting change In terms of the shift required in my own nursing practice, and I know that in the course of the EMPOWER study I…

The Convener of the Health and Sport Committee repeated the comment that he had made to Sir Harry Burns in the first evidence session:

I have expressed before that I share the Convener’s impression of Sir Harry Burns’ Report. Like the Convener, I also noted Sir Harry Burns’ deference to the “folk up the hill”. Here he was referring to senior Scottish Government officials.

One of those senior Government officials is the Director for Health and Social Care Integration, Geoff Huggins, who was previously Director for Mental Health. Mr Huggins confirmed that his Department will be “working to develop a next-stage process” of Sir Harry’s Review into Targets and Indicators.

This unedited clip (apart from titles) is from the evidence session on NHS Targets given to the Health and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament on 10 January 2018.

I share the view of the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood that we need to be balanced in how much we measure. As has been said before, not all that counts is countable, and not all that is countable counts.

The Director of Health and Social Care Integration, Geoff Huggins (Scottish Government) then continues on from Dr Calderwood. The narrative that Mr Huggins gives on the Scottish Government’s Dementia Target is misleading. Mr Huggins blames General Practitioners for not supporting the Dementia Diagnosis target. Mr Huggins cites only benefits of the Target and seems to continue to demonstrate “willful blindness” of any harms. It thus worries me very much that Mr Huggins has been tasked in taking forward the next…